Komsomolskaya (Three Stations) Square

In the years since Investigator Arkady Renko’s first appearance in Gorky Park his fortunes have waxed and waned with the politics of Russia. This has brought him threat of execution, exile on a factory ship as a political undesirable, and rehabilitation in Yeltsin’s Russia.

In Three Stations Renko is once more out of favour with the powers that be. In spite of this he begins to ask awkward questions relating to the dead body of a young woman found with no obvious injuries. Elsewhere Renko’s young friend Zhenya takes it upon himself to try to help a young girl who’s baby has been stolen, also in Three Stations. Their investigations bring them into contact with the excesses of Russia’s contemporary oligarchs and the desperation of the abandoned children who live at the margins of Moscow society.

Renko must rate as one of the nicest detectives in modern crime fiction: the tragedies of his life, his deeply regretted, but very useful, capacity for violence and the mundane horrors of his work never undermines his inate decency, wry humour, and unfailing politeness. In many ways he’s like Inspector Morse but without the grumpiness in a bloodier Russian milieu.

While there is little of the shock of the new that came with Gorky Park’s exploration of Soviet bureaucracy this book is still a cracking thriller, and a return to form of a great series that has lagged somewhat of late. As always Renko is like the most dependable of old friends, a compelling guide and knight errant in the midst of a brutal labyrinth.

The Killer Angels is a fine account of the Battle of Gettysburg, the turning point of the American Civil War. Shelby Foote’s magisterial history of that war credits the Union victory at Gettysburg principally to Generals Reynolds and Hancock. However, with the exception of the Confederate General Robert Lee, who is a major protagonist in this novel, for the most part The Killer Angels focuses upon key second and third rank leaders, in particular Longsteet amongst the Confederates and Buford and Chamberlain in the Union army: Buford fought decisively on his own initiative on the first day of the battle to deny the Conferates the high ground, and Chamberlain, along with others such as Paddy O’Rorke and the New York 140th, conducted a brilliant defense of a hill called Little Round Top on the second day to stop the Union forces from being flanked. Both these incidents had been overshadowed in other accounts of the battle, including Foote’s. Here the defence of Little Round Top is the centrepiece of the book, vividly described and for me the novel’s highlight. In emphasising the Little Round Top fight Shaara ensures that Chamberlain, one of the Civil War’s most outstanding figures, is properly remembered (though, perhaps unfairly, to the exclusion of some others who fought on Little Round Top that day).

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

The book advances the thesis that aside from fine Union leadership Confederate disaster at Gettysbury arose from an overwhelming hubris on the part of Lee who seemed incapable of believing, after so many victories up to that point, that defeat could any longer be a possibility for him. However while there is probably considerable truth to this thesis it is sustained in this novel by the sleight of ignoring Lee’s efforts, stopped by the Union cavalry including a young General Custer, to get behind the Union lines with Stuart’s cavalry in support of Pickett’s charge. Pickett’s charge was a desperate gamble, but maybe not quite the sacrificial affair portrayed here. Indeed Custer and the other cavalry who fought that day should perhaps stand alongside Chamberlain and Buford for the importance of their actions on the third day of the battle in ensuring Union victory.

Foote’s Civil War has been called an American Iliad, and it certainly must rank amongst the outstanding American literature, as well as history, of the twentieth century. In the Killer Angels the Homeric echoes are also poignantly present, most notably in the character of Longstreet, doomed like Cassandra to foresee in the minutest detail the coming disaster, but like her unable to make anyone believe him. The image of Longstreet weeping as he passes on the order for what he knows will be a slaughter of his troops on the last day of the battle is a powerful one.

Overall a fine novel that seeks to honour the courage of all, even those who fought for the vile cause of the Confederacy.

All stories are love stories…

I started reading Eureka Street one evening when I was working in Angola. I had no expectations of the book and began reading it really only because a friend had given it to me. I was hooked by the first page. In the end I had to take an afternoon off work to finish it I was so gripped. I think someone has described this book as “the Irish War and Peace… with better jokes than Tolstoy”.

I’ve not read War and Peace yet. Rather Eureka Street reminded me of some of the classic “buddy” movies, like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, with its shifts between high comedy and brutally realistic violence and its focus at core on the friendship between Chuckie and Jake. One is Protestant and the other Catholic, but this is incidental. There is no heavy handed nonsense about friendship across the barricades in the book. Such friendships are commonplace in Belfast as elsewhere. Rather the book is about ordinary young people trying to live ordinary lives in Belfast in the early 90s. Hence this involves drinking, chasing girls and trying to make a living.

The result is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read as it details Jake’s efforts to recover from a broken heart and Chuckie’s efforts to become rich. Of course this is Belfast during the Troubles so violence intrudes shockingly: modest dreams are no defence against buffoons with guns and bombs intent on putting the world to rights.

The book is a testimony to why Belfast is the greatest city in Ireland – blasted to bits for years by invaders and locals alike and still a home to great love, great humour, great decency and great tea!

A masterpiece!